The introduction of website management technologies like WordPress has effectively improved web design and web development for website owners.
This is a great thing for business owners thinking of running a web presence that they can fully manage by themselves.
Before “blogging” and the development of powerful content management systems, if you needed a business web site, you normally had to wait until both the web development and website design processes were fully completed. This could take many weeks, sometimes even months!
The development of WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, we will explore what WP themes are, how they save you and your business money on web development costs, and how themes allow you to easily customize your website.
Web Design Revolution
Website owners are benefiting from a change in web design that has been going for a number of years now. If you own a business, you will want to know about this, because it could save you thousands of dollars on website development or web design costs.
Let’s take a look at how things typically worked in “traditional” web development before a CMS software like WordPress came along:
First, you would discuss your project with a web site developer or designer. Then, the ”look and feel” of your website would be decided upon. This involved spending time and money with a professional web site designer going over things of the website like the, colors, formats, graphic elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be hand-coded with your elements and scripts coded into your content. All the pages were then assembled together into a website using links and custom coded navigation menus and uploaded to your server, along with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only after everything had been tested and worked the way it should (and looking the way the client had wanted it to look), was the site deemed to be finished and ready to go live.
The next phase in the evolution of business web design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. A web template allows design elements of the website to be created separately from content on the page. Having templates helped make building websites faster and resulted in reduced costs of production. This also enabled web site developers to service business clients with smaller marketing budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more small businesses began using “template-based” web design services, web templates were introduced that offered a number of custom features and options, like the ability to switch colors, styles, layouts
As web sites and web building tools evolved, web templates also began transforming into website template “systems” that let website owners control the design aspects of their web site.
Then, WordPress came along and helped to kick off a new website revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme drives the idea of a website templating system further.
A WordPress theme controls the design aspects of a website. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a website template system does but it also also gives you complete control over the management, presentation and ability to customize template features.
According to the official WordPress site …
A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. A Theme modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Themes may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).
(source: WordPress.org)
As the above quote states, one of the unique and revolutionary features of WordPress is that the way your website looks to visitors is an entirely different system from the way your site functions in the backend to handle areas like content management and functionality.
Basically, what this means is that a theme lets you modify the look and feel of your site as much and as often as you like without modifying your site’s content and all the functionality you’ve built into it. For example, if your site has been set up for e-commerce, changing the entire look of your site with a different theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of your website. All e-commerce features, site and plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when you use WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is done. You can get your website built quickly and get started with any WP theme you want, and then customize the entire look, feel and design of your WordPress site in a few seconds, whenever you choose … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily replace any theme on your site with no web code development knowledge required. Simply choose a WP theme you want, install it on your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, layout, typography and more in a few seconds …
Since WordPress is open source software, thousands of website design companies can design themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WP templating system.
This means that loads of high quality WP themes can be downloaded by WP users. WordPress are usually distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) WP themes.
The WordPress development team keeps a FREE theme directory which allows WordPress users to download, access and install thousands of excellent web templates for free …
(WordPress.org – Themes Directory)
As WordPress becomes more popular, more designers are now focused on creating themes for a wider range of applications.
Themes range from minimal-looking, to quirky designs that are simply beautiful and would normally cost thousands of dollars to design. Surprisingly, themes can be purchased quite cheaply, especially when compared to what it would have cost you if a website designer had to code it from scratch.
You can see several theme galleries containing various examples of themes in this article:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WP Themes – Benefits And Advantages
Here are just some of the benefits of choosing WordPress themes over choosing traditional web design:
Easy, Quick And Simple To Install
WordPress themes are very easy to install on your site. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the WP theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from within your WordPress dashboard.
Additionally,
- WordPress has a growing online community of commercial web developers who, collectively, make thousands of great WordPress Themes available to WP users. Thousands of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a consistent design across all of your site’s elements, i.e. pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This allows you change WordPress themes as often as you want without affecting your site’s data.
- Many themes come with built-in features and options that let you easily customize your site’s layout, style and design elements to create a unique look to suit your taste.
- Many WordPress themes are built using a framework that lets you update the theme to a newer theme version without losing its unique customizations (e.g. CSS styles)
- WordPress allows you to search, upload and install WordPress Themes automatically from the admin panel.
- Themes lets you save hundreds of dollars on web development costs. Free themes cost nothing and most “Premium”WordPress themes are typically quite inexpensive.
About Responsive WordPress Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now developing “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables a website to automatically readjust screen size to display smoothly across different screen sizes and resolutions, as well as different devices (e.g. laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for different types of devices. Users can navigate, read and display a site on most if not all device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring website owners to install additional browser elements.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we strongly recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that the content and layout of your site will display correctly on all of your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore should comply with the latest standards of website design and coding.
We hope this post has given you a better understanding of WordPress themes, what WP themes are, how themes can help your business save money, and how WP themes make customizing sites easy.
In the next article on helping you understand WP features, we show you where to find great WordPress themes for your website or blog.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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